Many of {grow} readers work for small businesses. What is the best advice you could give to a small company or a regional brand establishing a foothold in social media marketing?

I love lists. Here are my Six Strategies for Success:

1) It’s all about your audience: If you only remember one thing, remember this point. This is where social media is no different than traditional marketing. Ask yourself these questions: who are your customers, where are they living online, what communities do they participate in, what do they like to talk about there? Now go play in that field.

2) Stay focused. You absolutely must set clear goals and objectives for your social media program AND you must align these with your marketing and business objectives, AND you must stick with them.

3) Everyone on board. Get buy-in throughout your organization. Social media touches all aspects of an organization, so get everyone paddling the same direction here.

5) Measure your results and fine-tune your strategy. Set up a system for monitoring your progress, then adjust your strategy. Repeat often. See my answer earlier on ROI.

6) Get an expert. If at all possible, hire an expert to get you up and running or to give you a tune-up. Seriously, Social media is not rocket science, but who has the hours to invest in learning the ins and outs and ups and downs, thousands of apps and best practices? This will save you money in the long run. With your strategy in hand and several months of implementation under your belt, you can run with this baby or hire someone cheaper to run it for you.

Robin, thank you so much for doing this interview. Here is my final question. Do you ever wash children in the sinks?

What???

Robin Frank consults with a wide range of companies – retail, banking, clean/greentech, and B2B – helping them establish cost-effective Social Media programs that increase marketing ROI and foster broader and deeper customer engagement and education. You can reach her at @robeen, robeenf@gmail.com, or linkedin.com/in/robinfrank.

This is the second part of my interview with Robin Frank, who leads social media efforts for Gap Outlet, Banana Republic Factory Store and other well-known brands. The first part is here.

After being in the social media trenches for some time, what organizational or cultural changes need to be made at a company to succeed with the new channel?

In the world of improv comedy, there is a concept called invisible rules – the rules you play by, but have never really questioned and aren’t explicitly stated. Traditional brands have a few invisible rules that social media pushes them to articulate, explore, and eventually move past, and each company has their own set.

One such rule is that large brands historically use any opportunity for customer interaction to push their product and promotions. Engaging their brand advocates in conversations, rewarding their customers with special deals and promotions, and encouraging word-of mouth on a daily basis is new territory. The real fun begins when they branch out and offer relevant and useful content for their social media audiences. Sometimes this is an easy leap and just a matter of giving them a few creative ideas that are aligned with their brand.

For Gap Outlet and Banana Republic Factory Store, we created a series of tweets (and soon Facebook posts) that run several times a week called “Fab without a Fortune” – these are tips that speak to their social media audiences and show them the brand “gets” what they want and is there to help them shop smarter, stretch their dollars, and still be fashionable. We’ve had a great response with these.

The other invisible rule I sometimes come up against is the “email is king” mentality – brands want to use social media to drive people to their email lists because then they’ve GOT them. I see many companies with big budgets for email marketing, and they need some help understanding that social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook can be less intrusive, more direct, and offer better results.

Customers are more likely to follow you or fan you than give you an email address. And, it is mega opt-in – customers want to hear from you more than say, once a week – they want to hear from you several times a day. I have seen double digit click through rates on Twitter and Facebook that put email marketing to shame. These companies need some guidance to transfer resources and rethink their approach so they can ask their loyal customers to join them on Twitter and Facebook.

As every brand competes for the consumer’s attentions, the emerging social media channel is becoming noisy and crowded. Is consumer overloading a real risk for you?Sure, there are a lot of brands and noise out there, but there will always be loyal followers who want to HEAR from your brand and want to be HEARD. Going forward, consumers will actually demand higher engagement from brands – more useful content, more useful promotions, more entertaining links, more conversations.

Smart brands will give consumers the ability to CHOOSE how they want to interact – email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or any other channel. Just remember that social media followers are finicky – the will unfollow you in a click, or simply not participate if you do something they don’t like. My advice is to stay focused, stay engaged, and make it as easy as possible for consumers to do business with you.

Tomorrow: Robin’s six social media strategies for YOU!

Robin consults with a wide range of companies – retail, banking, clean/greentech, and B2B – helping them establish cost-effective Social Media programs that increase marketing ROI and foster broader and deeper customer engagement and education. You can reach her at @robeen, robeenf@gmail.com, or linkedin.com/in/robinfrank.

This week I’m excited to introduce a three-part interview with Robin Frank, a marketing professional who leads the social media strategies for Gap Outlet, Banana Republic Factory Store and other national brands. Away we go …

Robin, on these powerful brands you work with, how are you integrating social media marketing with traditional marketing strategy … or are you?

The reality is that big brands WANT to do social media the integrated way, but they often seem unwilling to invest a lot upfront in content, strategy and integration. The media also doesn’t help, as it leads them to expect big things for just showing up to the party. They figure once they have “proven” social media works, they will then get in there – lock, stock and barrel.

I see some brands that are reluctant to integrate traditional marketing (website, blog, email, or offline/online advertising, promotions etc.) until their social media programs are deemed “successful enough.” For these clients, it helps to have good analytics, a focused pilot, and to plot out the integration with their marketing strategy in phases.

Other brands have jumped head-first onto the social media bandwagon because they HAD to be there, but with minimal strategy, focus, and expertise and haphazard alignment to marketing/business objectives. They’re now wondering why they aren’t seeing the returns hyped by the media. These clients are open to integrating social media into their marketing mix – they just need help evaluating the best way to go about this – choosing the right channels, campaigns, and communication strategy.

What accountability does the social media aspect of brand management have? What metrics are in place and what tools do you use to measure progress?

The social media segment is finding itself increasingly accountable. At first, there were a lot of people talking about how social media doesn’t have traditional ROI, it has all kinds of other types like ROE, and how it was impossible to quantify the monumental impacts on brand equity and community. But that doesn’t fly for long with brand management.

You need to justify and quantify your efforts and the resources spent. And you need to be smart about it. There are numerous applications and platforms out there and it can be difficult for companies to know what to use and how to put it all together in a report that is really useful. I have my own selection of favorites which I customize to report both financial and non-financial indicators and present it in a compelling, useful, and actionable format.

While measurement and analytics are carefully tailored to each client, those of you trying this at home will want to include these same elements in your reporting – financial ROI to measure sales, transactions and customers; non-financial metrics to measure mentions, sentiment, link click-throughs, exposure, virals (retweets, comments, shares, etc.), and conversations/engagement.

So much of the success of social media is dependent on authenticity and personality. How does personality come through on your initiatives? How is the social media brand persona determined — through standards and guidelines or is it at the discretion of the communicator?

I guide my clients in creating a social media brand persona, and we define its limits together. I usually help craft or tailor guidelines for interaction and participation for all employees/contributors.

There is a lot of hand-holding that goes on – brands are sometimes stuck in the traditional push marketing voice – you know, the one devoid of human connection. They have to be educated on how to speak with a personality that people can connect with, and one that reflects their brand values.

I usually do a lot of the content in the first months, and they have to sign-off to make sure it is “on brand.” Over time, brands learn how to have a little fun and to be all the things they should be on social media – interesting, engaging, entertaining, helpful, and participatory – in other words, they learn to be a valuable member of the community they create.

Tomorrow: Social media culture change and consumer info overload!

Robin Frank consults with a wide range of companies – retail, banking, clean/greentech, and B2B – helping them establish cost-effective social media programs that increase marketing ROI and foster broader and deeper customer engagement and education. You can reach her at @robeen, robeenf@gmail.com, or linkedin.com/in/robinfrank.

I first connected to this talented U.K. out-sourcing professional through a Linked-In forum, where he professed befuddlement about Twitter. I encouraged him to give it a try and provided a little coaching. So, I became his follower number one!Most of my very first followers were … nubile young ladies in bikinis. Or less. I blocked them and watched my number of followers sink back into single figures. My vanity almost made me stop as it only reinforced that in cyberspace, if you aren’t connected to anyone, no one can hear you Tweet.Something I’ve learned is that on Twitter and social networks, first impressions count. This is doubly important with something like Twitter, given the hard work that people put into trying to build their network of business contacts. While “reciprocal following” is pretty normal, within a business context, it’s fair to say that professionals will be more selective. They are following and being followed for a reason.

What are the implications for people seeking to make that first good impression on Twitter?

Since then, Chris has continued to grow and experiment with Twitter and I asked him if he would provide his unique view on how a smart guy figures out an apparently dumb communication channel. One conclusion: first impressions count! Here’s Chris:

It has been rather intimidating settling into the Twitter world as a newbie with apparently nothing to say, offer, or a tweet track record that warrants any meaningful place in somebody’s Twitter life.

I would suggest that a key element to being successful is actually having a communication plan in place before looking for an audience. Finding the right people to follow is time-consuming and, once you’ve acquainted yourself with and reached out to someone, it is absolutely key that you create the desired impact. You can’t rely on having “brand value” like (ahem) Ashton Kutcher, and there is limited opportunity to position yourself with the standard profile layouts.

You might want to spend a period of time tweeting to nobody, simply to build some “profile collateral” that gives people an understanding of who you are, what your interest or industry is and how your being in their network adds value to their Twitter experience.

You may want to get even a modest blog going on that you can reference from your Tweets, giving people swift access to deeper thinking than can be articulated within the context of an SMS message. The key is having the confidence that, when someone comes to your profile for the first time, they feel compelled to connect with you immediately, as the foundations are there for meaningful exchange.

Equip your profile with the means to make the right first impression, including a nice photo and an interesting and accurate short bio. Otherwise, potential connections will have no reason to stay with you beyond that initial contact that you have worked so hard to establish. The short bio plays an important role when people are trying to find like-minded people to follow.

You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression in the real world, and you probably won’t in the virtual one. Even if, like those first followers were, you are wearing a bikini. Or less.

Chris Hughes has worked in the contact center and business process outsourcing industry for about 16 years. He would really, really love for you to connect with him on Twitter at @chrishughesuk.

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